Lenovo Legion Y720 Review

As someone who primarily uses PC games, my advice to anyone looking to join PC games will be to build their own. Until recently, I would have written that my advice would be to always go to the custom compilation route, but thanks to that thorn in the side of the game enthusiast known as the mining cryptocurrency, that may not be entirely realistic for a while. In turn, these purchases pre-built PCs a better proposition than it usually is, and there are many manufacturers ready and waiting to fill gaps. Lenovo was once a manufacturer of this type, with its Y720 offering solid hardware from mid-range to high in a mobile package.

Lenovo legion y720 specs

Design

The Y720 looks a lot like Lenovo’s set of game-centric computers, with a black color scheme accentuated by red. If you’ve already seen a machine with the Legion brand, you know what to expect: something a little more subtle than a normal gaming laptop, but still decidedly a laptop made for players.

There is not much in the way of external lighting in the Legion Y720. The Legion logo on the back of the screen lights up, but other than that, you have a black machine (except for another red patch on the bottom of the device that no one will ever see). I like the overall look, but one thing that has become a nuisance to me is that the sleek, shiny finish on the outside of the laptop seems to be particularly good at attracting fingerprints and skin oils.

Obviously, even though this is an infinitely frustrating thing for me, it is not a decisive factor. If you judged the value of a laptop computer with such little discomfort, no machine would get a passing grade. Still, this could be something worth taking into account if you share this particular irrationality with me.

In the end, the Legion Y720 has a rather inconspicuous design, but honestly, it is the way I prefer it. If I’m going to carry a laptop to play with, I do not need to act as a kind of bright beacon that lets everyone know I’m using the computer. The black and red color scheme look good, and limited external lights give this notebook a fairly conventional look that does not exaggerate. If I got my way, more laptops for games would practice the subtlety of the way that Lenovo has here.

Like all other gaming laptops, the Legion Y720 weighs considerably more than your standard laptop. There is a good reason for this, of course, since you are packing more severe hardware than your standard laptop as well. With a weight that starts at 7.05 pounds (and increases according to your configuration), this is not exactly a light machine. Nor is it small: its 15.6-inch screen and its full-size keyboard take care of that. You will have to take additional consideration for space if you are going to charge the Y720 with you, but that is the life of a PC player with a preference for laptops.

Performance

Apparently, if you are buying the Legion Y720 for anything, it is not for looks, but playing games (or do other intensive projects in graphics such as 3D rendering). For this, hardware obviously counts more than anything, and a gaming laptop that lacks adequate hardware will be forgotten and quickly forgotten as manufacturers move to cram their machines with better and better parts.

Regarding power, the Legion Y720 is not far behind. The model they sent me for review is the Lenovo Y720, with a Core i7 7700HQ CPU clocked at 2.80GHz and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. This model also has 16 GB of RAM, a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive and a 512 GB SSD.

The result of all this hardware is a small, fast machine that starts quickly and manages to avoid the delay when performing most tasks. While the GTX 1060 is not the best card in the NVIDIA 10 series (in fact, far from it), it is more than likely that it is capable enough for modern games that you want to play on a laptop.

Does this mean that you can maximize the graphics settings in every game in the next few years? No, but for now, the GTX 1060 is a solid card that should allow some very nice games. For example, the GTX 1060 is sufficient to meet the recommended requirements for the next Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, and I imagine that will be the case for many computer games with intense graphics for one or two more years. In summary: while the GTX 1060 may not offer as much power as its older siblings in the 10 series, it is likely to take a while before you begin to feel that crack inability.

In fact, at the moment, the GTX 1060 is a solid graphics card. In Divinity: Original Sin 2, a game without flaws of impressive (and intensive) graphics, I discovered that putting everything in Ultra configuration gave me a frame rate that exceeded 100 in indoor environments without much on the screen and playing bottom in the middle of the 70 when the laptop had to render a lot of objects and characters or when the incredible particle effects of Original Sin 2 filled the screen. The Ultra profile in D: OS 2 includes the highest settings for textures, lighting and shadow quality; configurations such as environmental occlusion, god rays and activated bloom; and finally, 16x anisotropic texture filtering and SMAA.

Therefore, the GTX 1060 is certainly not a pigeon, but it will not melt your face to the extent that the GTX 1080 can do it. Obviously, you’ll want to keep the lenovo legion Y720 plugged into a power source while you play, since trying running a game while the laptop runs on a battery will cause a significant drop in frame rate.

Of course, you can drop the graphics settings to compensate for this, but even then it’s still not the most efficient way to play games on the lenovo legion Y720, since I only got like an hour and 40 minutes from a full load to the point where who received a 10% warning about the battery life while playing They Are Billions. Do not let that generate anxiety about potentially short battery life since I got about 4 hours of life with a full charge when I was transmitting video with the screen at half brightness.

On the other hand, it is a bit confusing that Lenovo chose not to offer a variant of the Legion Y720 with a GTX 1070, even only for those who do not mind paying more as a means to protect their laptop in the future a little more. Regardless of the configuration you choose, you only have the option of a GTX 1060 with this laptop.

The Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor in the review unit and 16 GB of RAM help keep things running smoothly. With a Core i7, you will not have to worry about your CPU being a bottleneck for game performance at some point in the near future, and unless you’re going to do things like video processing on this laptop in addition To play, you can honestly go for the base model, which ships with a Core i5-7300HQ.

While the base model only comes with 8 GB of RAM, the good news is that it is also very customizable, which means you can upgrade to 16GB for just $100 more. I think this is worth the extra money. There was a moment ago not long ago when 8 GB of RAM was suitable for a gaming platform, but we are fast reaching the point where 16GB will be known as standard. With many upcoming games suggesting 16GB in its recommended specifications, it will be much easier to pay a little more than it will be to deal with the frustrations of reaching that ceiling later on.

The IPS 15.6-inch screen that Lenovo has equipped with the Y720 is also quite solid. Although it is not like the one I prefer with a gaming laptop, the glow is not the problem with other shiny finishes. Lenovo has treated the screen with an anti-glare coating, and while it does not prevent the reflection from being a complete problem, it still significantly reduces it. If I can not have a matte screen (which I understand does not look very good on a gaming laptop that is supposed to look elegant), I will take something like this.

The 1080p LED screen will probably not blow your mind like a 4K desktop monitor will do, but it is perfectly suited for this machine. The colors look rich and the images are sharp, which is all you can ask for at the end of the day, right? Anything else is simply the icing on the cake and is unnecessary when we also have to make concessions for the duration of the battery.

The trackpad and the keyboard are equally “good enough.” Lenovo managed to resist betting on RGB madness, and although the chiclet-style keyboard has RGB backlighting, it’s zoned so it can not make every single key different. Color or set these crazy lighting patterns. Your backlighting is handled through Lenovo Sense, and although the keyboard is zoned, you still have many options when it comes to customization, so I honestly can not say that I miss having a backlight for each key.

The two-button trackpad works well when it comes to browsing, but if you’re using this laptop to play (as is its purpose), you’ll almost never use it. Get yourself a decent Bluetooth mouse and use it instead, because trying to play games with a touchpad, especially those that require quick reactions, is simply an invitation to frustration.

Finally, we arrive at the JBL speakers of the lenovo legion Y720. These are a kind of anomaly within the word of laptops, games or otherwise. The speakers seem to provide a sound a bit more complete than most laptops (although the bass does not yet exist, as expected), but one interesting thing to keep in mind is that these bad guys can get noisy. I think you should still get a good pair of headphones or headphones to use while playing games, but if that is not an option after dropping the required cash for the lenovo legion Y720, the included speakers at least do a useful job.

lenovo legion y720 amazon

Wrap

In the end, the Lenovo Legion Y720 is an excellent laptop, although it does not have much to distinguish it from the crowd. As I said before, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because hardware, not software or design, is one of the most important things when it comes to games, and the things that are inside this laptop are enough to guarantee that most of the games work well.

So, although I will not sing the praises of the Lenovo legion Y720 from the top of the mountain, I have no problem to suggest that you at least consider the Y720 if you are looking for a gaming laptop. This, of course, would typically be the time when I recommend that you build your PC for games instead of buying a precompiled one, but there are two problems with that.

First of all, it is obvious that if you are specifically looking to buy a portable gaming laptop for the portability factor, suggesting that you think a desktop computer is silly. Even if I could convince you that you create a desktop computer, the second problem is that PC hardware is ridiculously expensive at the moment. This means that the pre-builts have a rare moment in the spotlight among the enthusiastic PC players, and the Lenovo legion Y720 benefits from that.

Although laptops are not my preferred form factor when it comes to PC gaming, those looking for one should consider the Lenovo legion Y720. Assuming you start with Lenovo’s base model – which is currently $ 1099 in the Lenovo store – and make some adjustments from there, you should take a solid gaming machine without even thinking about the absurd prices of PC parts. Personally, I think that’s worth a lot right now.